Minecraft at school

Minecraft has been around for nearly eight years now and the surprisingly popular 3D world keeps going from strength to strength.

For those of you who are not Minecraft mad might not know what all the fuss is about the game is playable in three versions, you can go the Xbox route, build your own 3D wonderland on the PC or more recently get your block building fix on the iPhone or iPad or any other tablet you might have.

Building your own mansion is a basic must for any Minecraft gamer

Considering every block is built from scratch some players’ 3D worlds are truly epic!

Originally created by Swedish game designer Notch, and later fully developed and published by Mojang. The creative and building ability of Minecraft enables players to build constructions out of textured 3D cubes that create your digital world. Other activities in the game include exploration, resource gathering, crafting, and combat.

Minecraft development started in May 2009, but the game was not due for release until November 18, 2011. Just 3 years later in 2014, Minecraft became the best selling PC game of all time! By December 2016 sales had reached a whopping 25 million copies. Technology giant Microsoft took note and bought the game and rights from Mojang in late 2014 for £1.8 billion pounds.

It soon became clear that the game was also a great educational tool. Microsoft followed their purchase of the game by also buying MinecraftEdu, an educational version of the game designed by Finland based developer TeacherGaming. Microsoft say that the game is already used in over 7,000 classrooms around the world. Anthony Salcito, Microsoft’s vice-president of worldwide education, told the BBC, “Teachers are using Minecraft to do so many things, including teaching maths, science, religion and poetry,”

A more recent addition is a feature called Tumble where you use a shovel or snow balls to knock opponents off the edges of your creation into lava. Very enjoyable in multi-player mode with your friends. Jude from the YJA team said, “I love playing Minecraft, there is so much to do and learn in the game. It would be amazing if we had the MinecraftEdu version in school!”

The desktop edition of Minecraft comes in single player and multiplayer game modes and can be played using the downloadable stand-alone launcher. The official demo is free, but has a time limit, and once you get hooked you may well need more time to create your dream base.

Minecraft is the best game in my opinion what do you think about it? Are you one of the lucky ones that get to use Minecraft at school?